Part 17

“That letter is the best present we could have had, anyway,” said Betty as she looked again at the big special-delivery stamp. “It means that mother is out of danger and that we shall be at home in a month.”

A month before that when mother was first taken sick, the twins had been sent to Uncle Ben’s so that their own house should be very, very still. They had played on the big farm, had gone to school in the queer little old schoolhouse and watched for the rural delivery postman to bring them letters from home.

Christmas at home meant days of shopping, treats when Uncle Tom came home from college, parties at the church and at the schoolhouse, and Santa Claus, fat and jolly, ringing his little tinkling bells, ting-a-ling-aling! on the street corners. Besides that, Christmas at home meant planning for weeks ahead a gift that would bring Christmas cheer to some little child that was poor.

“Bobby, do you remember how pleased little Johnny Granger was when you gave him that pair of skates?”

“I guess I do! They were the first skates he had ever had! You gave his little sister a pair of rubber boots the same year. How happy she was with them! She wore them to school all winter whether it rained or not. I wish we could have some kind of a Christmas this year, just to keep from forgetting what day it is. There isn’t even snow,” and Bob looked with disgust at the bare, brown fields that stretched away in front of the little old farmhouse. “At home they’ve all been so worried over mother that probably no one has had time to buy us presents.”

“Well, Bobby, mother is better and that is the best present in all the world for us,” and Betty smiled bravely at her brother.

“I wish we could make a Christmas for somebody else,” said Bobby slowly. “There aren’t any poor people like the Granger family up here. Besides, we couldn’t buy anything anyway, for there aren’t any stores. Isn’t this the strangest Christmas you ever saw?”

“Yes, Bob, it is. No place to spend money; woods full of Christmas trees and no presents to put on them; no one who needs help; no snow or skating or company. We are going to have a fine Christmas dinner, though. Uncle Ben killed a pair of fat chickens yesterday.”

“And I’m going to crack butternuts right now,” said Bobby, and he jumped up and left his twin sister to romp with Buddy, the collie, who ran up to her and thrust his soft nose into her hand, teasing for a game of tag.

“O Buddy, Buddy, I’ll give _you_ a Christmas present,” and Betty ran upstairs and came flying down again with a big blue ribbon in her hand.

“There, old fellow,” she said as she tied a huge bow on Buddy’s collar, “you are going to have a Christmas present.” As she spoke she clapped her hands and ran for Bobby. “O, Bob, hurry up and finish your butternuts. I think we can have a Christmas after all. Hurry! Hurry!” Betty ran to find Uncle Ben and whisper something in his ear. She began to do the queerest things. Up to the attic she ran and down again, her arms full of big boxes and little ones; then down to the cellar, and up with an armful of carrots and apples; then out to the barn, and back with a box of corn and oats.

By that time Bobby had cracked all the butternuts for dinner and stood with his hands in his pockets, watching his sister. “What in the world are you doing?” he said with a grin.

Betty grinned at him. “You take the axe and go over to the upland pasture and cut down a little Christmas tree; Uncle Ben said we could.”

“But we haven’t a thing to put on the tree.”

“We shall have something when you get back. Uncle Ben will take Mollie and meet you and haul the tree home.”

Bob went off, wondering, and Betty began to snip up pieces of an old gray flannel shirt of Uncle Ben’s and to rummage in the button box for old shoe buttons.

When Bob drove in with Uncle Ben and the little tree, Betty dangled in front of him seven gray mice by their tails of string. With shoe buttons for eyes and bodies made of gray flannel they looked so real that Uncle Ben jumped when he saw them.

“My land, child, those mice would fool any cat in the county!”

“Smell,” answered Betty, and she dangled her treasures under her uncle’s nose.

“Catnip mice,” he chuckled.

“I guess I know now who your poor folks will be this year. They haven’t a cent to their name, nor a shirt to their backs,” laughed Bobby, “but why the tree?”

Such a busy morning as the twins had after that! Bob set up the tree in the middle of the big barn. Betty made little bundles that were as mysterious as any Christmas package you ever saw. Then she hung them on the tree; a package of meat cut fine for Buddy, marked with his name in big letters; seven catnip mice hung by their string tails for the seven cats on the farm; four carrots tied in a bunch of hay for Mollie; four apples tied in hay for Duke, the old gray horse; lumps of sugar in little bundles for Buddy and Duke and Mollie.

Then Betty was puzzled. She ran to Uncle Ben. “What does a cow like best?” she asked.

“Well, my cows like cornstalks. There is a pile back of the old barn.”

So there were bundles of cornstalks at the base of the tree. Betty tied them in loose bunches for the cows. On the floor, too, stood a big bag of corn for the hens.

After dinner the fun began. Everyone put on a sweater and went to the barn, Buddy at Betty’s heels proud of his new bow. Not all the cats could be found, but five of them came in answer to Aunt Martha’s call. Buddy took his meat and without a single “thank you” ran to an empty stall to eat it. The horses nodded “thank you” as they ate the sugar and the carrots and the apples that the children held out to them. Cats and kittens played with their catnip mice and lapped up saucers of milk. Mother Bunch slapped the gray kitten because he tried to steal her catnip mouse. The cows crunched their cornstalks and looked with mild surprise at the queer antics of the kittens. Bob carried the heavy pail of corn out to the hen yard and Betty fed the chickens which crowded to her feet.

When the children went back to the barn with the empty pail, they themselves had a surprise. A wild gray squirrel had stolen in at the open door, and was sitting up on his hind legs under the Christmas tree, eating the corn that had been spilled; and he seemed as much at home as if he had been invited to the party.

“I guess he must be our poor family,” laughed Betty as she threw him another handful of corn.

“Twinnies,” suddenly called a man’s voice from the yard. Only father called like that. The twins turned, and there he stood in the door of the barn, smiling at them. They rushed to his arms. How happy they were to see him.

“So you youngsters had a tree for the penniless poor, did you?” he said with a laugh.

“Well, run into the house with your father and I’ll see what this tree will have for you,” said Uncle Tom, who stood just behind their father, his arms loaded with bundles.

In less time than you would have thought it could be done, Uncle Tom had the tree ready for Betty and Bob.

“We have to start for home by five o’clock, so you children had better open your bundles right now,” said father. The twins did not need to be told twice. Eagerly they opened the packages, gay with ribbons and seals. There were books, snowshoes, a red silk umbrella for Betty and a pair of skating boots for Bob; candy, a gold piece for each twin from Uncle Tom; and best of all, a little pencil note from mother to tell them that she was really better and to wish them a merry Christmas.

“Well,” said Bobby as the big car drove out of the yard with father and Uncle Tom, “this hasn’t been such a queer Christmas, after all.”

[23] This story was first printed in “Youth’s Companion,” December 14, 1922. Reprinted by permission of the author and “Youth’s Companion.”

A CHRISTMAS FOR TONY[24]

_Zona Gale_

Little Anthony punched his small, hard pillow, to make it as large as possible, so that his head would come well above the level of the window sill. Wonderful, thick, Christmas-looking snow was falling, though it wanted two days yet to Christmas.

“Mother!” he cried, “I wish all the snow in the world would come and fall in front of our window!”

“It looks as if it had come,” said Mother Margaret.

That was what he usually called her--Mother Margaret: “Because that’s your name!” he said. “Everybody calls you Margaret, in letters. Nobody but me says ‘Mother.’”

“You want your head to be higher, don’t you?” she said now, and put down the paper roses which, all day long, she made for a great factory.

She brought him her own pillow, and under that she folded a bed-comforter. The poor little room had not a single cushion.

“Now!” she cried, “you can see all the snow there is.”

At any rate, Anthony could see nothing but snow--snow, and the dim rectangle of the Window Across.

The Window Across was the back window of an apartment which faced the avenue. Anthony’s window faced the court, and was over a store. There were three floors of families over the store, because the rooms were too old and inconvenient to use for offices. The Window Across had thin rose silk curtains at the casement and often, in the evening, one could look straight through to the front window and see bright moving figures and an unbelievable dinner table, all made of bright things. And two or three times, for ecstatic minutes, a little girl had come and stood at the Window Across. Once, indeed, she had come right away out on the fire-escape and stood there, dancing and laughing in the cold, until a white-capped maid had run in a panic and carried her in. Anthony’s window had been open then, and he had heard the maid cry: “Dear Child!”

So he always called her Dear Child.

He lay now looking through the snow to the Window Across, and imagining that the snow lay so deep that they were at last obliged to make a tunnel from one window to another, so that anybody could get out at all. But it was always he and Mother Margaret who went down the tunnel to the Window Across--never the others who came up, because the little room was so bare and so shabby and so unlike the room he imagined beyond the rose silk curtains. And always he was well and strong instead of obliged to lie in bed, as he had lain now for almost a year, to give strength to the poor back, wrenched and threatened by a fall.

Suddenly, as he looked, a beautiful thing happened. The silk curtains parted in the Window Across, the white-capped maid stood there, and she hung in the window a great wreath of Christmas holly tied with a scarlet bow.

Anthony sat up, and cried out and waved his thin little arms.

“Mother Margaret, Mother Margaret!” he cried. “Look--oh, look-at!”

Mother Margaret came and looked, and she exclaimed too, with something of pleasure--but through the pleasure there went darting and stabbing a pain which had been coming again and again these past few days; and as Christmas Day drew nearer, it had been hurting her more and more. It had come that morning when she had first waked. And she had said to herself, for the hundredth time:

“What _is_ the use? You can buy him some fruit--a big orange and a red apple. You can manage a little something for Christmas dinner. But you can’t do anything else, and what _is_ the use in thinking about it?”

She put down her paper flowers now, and went over to Anthony’s bed.

“Tony, dear,” she said, “I _believe_ you’re thinking about Christmas.”

He looked up, bravely and brightly.

“No, Mother, truly,” he said, “I wasn’t thinking about it hardly at all.”

She sat down on the bedside and took his hand. “You do know, don’t you, love,” she said, “that Mother Margaret can’t--she sure-enough can’t--do anything for our Christmas this year! But another year--”

“Yes, yes!” Tony agreed eagerly, “another year!”

“This year things are bad enough,” she said; “but if Mother thought that--somewhere in his little heart, he wasn’t quite believing her, and was thinking that maybe, _maybe_ some kind of Christmas would come to him, why, then--”

Her voice stopped of its own will--stopped, and steadied itself bravely, and went on again:

“Why, then,” she said, “Mother just couldn’t bear it _at all_.”

“Truly, Mother, truly!” said Anthony. “I know we can’t--I do know. Oh, but--why, Mother Margaret! That’s what makes it so nice to see the wreath! It’s just as if we almost had a wreath in our window--isn’t it, though?”

“Almost, almost,” she said, and went back to her paper flowers. She had six dozen red roses to make before Christmas Eve.

“And then the snow,” Anthony was saying eagerly. “Why, Mother, it’s like all the Christmas pictures. It’s like the Christmas cards. And oh, Mother,--think! It’s just as nice and white for us as if we lived no matter where!”

“Yes,” said his mother bitterly, “the snow and the cold are about the only things that are the same for us as for everybody.”

Anthony half closed his eyes and lay watching happily. Mother Margaret went on with her roses. As she worked, her lips were moving. But she was not counting the petals, as one would have supposed. She was counting, as she almost always counted, what she had in her purse and what she _must_ spend. And when one counts like this, all day long, it begins to show in one’s face, in one’s voice, in all one’s ways. Anthony was seven. It was six years since his father had died. And every year of these six years she had been fighting to keep Anthony with her. But this meant that she counted all day long.

At five o’clock Mother Margaret went out with half her roses. At the factory she sent them in and asked, as she did each time, for more tissue paper. The manager looked doubtful. Had she enough to finish her order? Oh, yes, she said; but she carried a little back at each delivery. The man returned. She would have to wait--everyone was busy with the rush mail orders. They could give out no paper till Monday.

As she went out, she lingered and looked about her. She did not guess what a pretty picture she made in her old brown coat and hat which just matched her eyes. What about all these women, she was wondering. Some of them must have little children at home. And they must have to count almost as much as she counted. She wished that she knew how they meant to manage about Christmas. Was there anything that she could do, if she knew how to do it, for Anthony’s Christmas?

A middle-aged woman was packing boxes near her. Mother Margaret went shyly to her.

“I wonder,” she said, “could you tell me anything you know how to do for a child’s Christmas? Something that won’t--that doesn’t--”

The woman leaned on the box for a moment. She nodded comprehendingly.

“Why,” she said, “no. Everything costs now. Did you ever try using the flowers?”

“The flowers?” Mother Margaret questioned.

“They decorate grand,” said the woman. “You can get a lot made up ahead, and string them around the room. You can make a tree look lovely with ’em, and nothing else. And it don’t hurt ’em none. Take ’em down, and they’re like new.”

Why had she never thought of that! She thanked the woman joyfully.

Mother Margaret flew along the street for the mile which she walked to save car fare, her head filled with visions. The pink and white and green tissue paper was there in their room; it was not hers, and it had not occurred to her that she could use it. But, just for one evening to borrow the flowers before she sent them out--oh, nobody could mind that. She could make the room beautiful, she could make a tree beautiful! But she knew she could not afford a tree.

There was one thing, however, which Mother Margaret could do. She had brought her library card in expectation of it. She went into the little branch library near where she lived, and eagerly to the desk. In these days before the holidays there was almost no one in the room. The pleasant-faced young woman at the desk had time to greet her with unusual cordiality.

“Oh,” said Mother Margaret, her cheeks flushed from her long walk, “I want you to find me a book. A book that a little child will like. A book all pictures. A Christmas book, if you can.”

“That ought to be easy,” the pleasant-faced young woman said, and went with her to the shelves, asking questions.

At the first book which she found and offered, Mother Margaret shook her head.

“No,” she said, “it’s got to be--to be larger than that. Thicker, I mean--it’s got to last longer. You see,” she explained, flushing still more, “I want it to last my little boy all day long, on Christmas. It’s about the only Christmas he’s going to have.”

“I see,” said the woman quietly.

“And then,” Mother Margaret said, “if you had something about modeling. About modeling in clay--”

“Does your little boy model in clay?” the librarian asked.

Mother Margaret flushed again. “He never has had any clay or any tools,” she said; “but he loves to read about it.”

They found two books, one on clay modeling, and one with many pictures, and a story of somebody’s wonderful Christmas that came when none was expected. Then the librarian considered for a moment, looking at a colored sheet of birds on the bulletin-board; she took down the poster, rolled and tied it and, from the bowl on her desk, fastened a sprig of holly in the cord.

“Flowers and birds and a piece of holly!” Mother Margaret cried, and thanked her joyfully.

She bought her red apple and a great orange, looked longingly at a window of chocolates, and ran home with her treasures.

As she was leaving the things in the sitting-room, on her own bed, she heard Anthony calling her.

“Mother--oh, Mother! Come here!” he shouted excitedly. When she ran to him he was sitting up--his face as near to the window as he could get.

“Look at! _Look_ at!” he said. “They’ve brought home their Christmas tree! They’ve hid it on the fire-escape!”

And there, leaning against the wall of the fire-escape, outside the Window Across, was a beautiful, tapering evergreen tree, sent home for Christmas and hidden outside there, unquestionably to surprise the Dear Child.

Anthony and his mother sat on the bed and looked at this tree. And presently they began to plan. On the very tip-top would be the star--or would it be the angel? They decided on the star. Below would come the ornaments, the candles, the nuts wrapped in silver paper, the pink hanging bags of candy, the pop-corn strings. All this Mother Margaret arranged, because she had seen many Christmas trees, and Anthony never had seen any. But there was one thing that he could plan.

“And then,” he said, “right close under the tree, would be the box all full of clay and things to model with!”

“Yes,” Mother Margaret agreed, with a catch in her voice. “That should be there, without a doubt.” Then she whispered to him.

“Tony, dear,” she said. “I’ve no Christmas for you. But I have got a little surprise.”

Her heart ached at the leaping delight in his eyes as he looked up at her.

“Not a gift, dear,” she hastened to say. “Just a little something for us to look at--oh, Tony, it isn’t much at all!” she broke off.

“Why, Mother,” Tony said, “a little much is _almost_ as nice as a great big much, you know!”

The gayety with which she had come in was slipping away, now that she had seen the tree for the Dear Child. Presently she went in the other room and opened the box where she kept the tissue paper. But the flowers would be something, after all, in the dull little room on Christmas Day. She lifted out the sheets, and stood staring at them. There were not more than three dozen sheets, and she had three dozen of the roses yet to make. One rose required a sheet of paper. These must be delivered by Christmas Eve--to-morrow night! No more paper would be given out till Monday. She could not even have the flowers for Anthony on Christmas day....

_If only Christmas were to-morrow!_

She went back into Anthony’s room and sat down beside his bed. She dreaded to tell him that even the poor “little much” of a surprise was not to be his. She put it off until they should have had their supper. After supper, in the dark, they could just see the tall shadow of the Christmas tree leaning against the opposite wall in the snow. Presently the Window Across flamed bright with the lighted globes within the room.

The tall Christmas tree there against the wall! Mother Margaret sat and stared at it. It seemed such a waste that it should be there all this time, with no one enjoying it. It seemed such a waste that it should stand there to-morrow, with no one enjoying it. It would be just as beautiful, decorated now, as it would be on Christmas Day....

And then Mother Margaret’s heart stood still at what it thought. But it thought about it once, it thought about it twice, and then it began to beat as Mother Margaret’s heart did not often beat any more. She sprang up and stood looking out the window, across the court to the tree. Could she possibly bring herself to do it? Would she dare? What would they think--what would they do--Oh, but she must try!

“Tony,” she said, “Mother must go out again now, for a few minutes.”

She slipped down to the street, and around the corner to the avenue. There was no difficulty in distinguishing the apartment building. She walked boldly in the door and to the elevator.

“Fourth,” she said with confidence.

The white-capped maid opened the door. She looked at Mother Margaret as a stranger, and Mother Margaret wanted to say: “Oh, but I know you very well!” Only, when she had seen her before, in the Window Across, she had looked quite small and like anybody; whereas she seemed now a person towering infinitely tall.

“I want,” said little Mother Margaret, quite loud and bold, “to see your mistress. At once.”